Kuching: Mango duck and ‘sa yong’

I’m suffering from holiday blues again! The only thing that is making it a bit easier this time is the thought that Jan and family will be joining us in Perth soon. Now if only Darren and my parents moved to Perth as well, that would be perfect.

In the days before the wedding, all friends and relatives flew in to Kuching. This is T and D all the way from Perth, they insisted on taking a photo in front of the famous cat in Cat City haha. I think even Gerry missed taking a photo with this cat.

But at least he managed to take a photo with these cats!

T and D with my parents at Stutong market where they tried kueh chap and kolo mee for the first time. They loved the dishes, no surprises there.

T getting a lesson from my ah pa on er hu. My father is a man of many musical talents, I seriously think that there’s no instrument that he can’t master. Tristan was thoroughly spoilt during this holiday, he had my father playing ‘london bridge is falling down’ over and over again on the organ until he fell asleep! Even I started feeling sleepy…

Gerry had his first kolo mee in Hui Sin from my favourite kolo mee stall.

Satay from Hui Sin, also our favourite place for satay.

Gerry and the Perth boys meet in Kuching for the first time. Everyone enjoyed yummy plates of char kway teow and tomato kway teow. Hui Sin is a great place to bring tourists who want to try good local Kuching food because there are so many good stalls serving a wide range of popular Kuching dishes.

Jo and I love this taogeh beehoon (bean sprouts with fried noodles) which has the right mix of wok hei, sweet (from sweet soy sauce) and salty flavours and is lovely with fried eggs.

The Singaporean relatives arrive and it’s a big seafood feast at Top Spot as usual. I think in future we might move to Benson seafood for our seafood feasts because it’s less touristy and the food equally good.

We went to Harbour Court one morning as HC had a craving for the dish below.

Mee sua, also know as vermicelli with chicken soup and foochow red wine. A traditional foochow meal that we usually have on the first day of Chinese New Year and also birthdays.

Another foochow dish, Zhao Cai Hong Gan(糟菜粉干) which is a soupy noodle dish which had preserved mustard greens (pickled with foochow red wine remnants) and a thick vermicelli. It has a refreshing sour tang and is very popular with foochow food lovers. Both R and my mum like this for breakfast.

Aunty Jenny came by with these gorgeous kuih for the wedding guests the next day. My only regret is that I never got to try any of these because they looked soo good.

Malay fried noodles which was pretty tasty with a drizzle of freshly squeezed lime juice.

We are always so spoilt by our parents when we return to Kuching. My parents will spend Sunday mornings at the local markets prior to our arrival searching for jia huay, a local vegetable that my sister Jan loves. When my ah ma read on my blog that I was missing ‘sa yong’ a dessert from my childhood, they ordered these from a restaurant that they knew made these delicious, fluffy chinese donuts (with red bean filling) and we had them piping hot from the restaurant. They were soooo good.

This was Jo’s craving, mango duck which my parents also ‘da paoed’ from a restaurant and we had for supper. This used to be our favourite dish to order at a Thai restaurant. I can’t even begin to describe how these mayo sauce like laden tender duck pieces layered on a piece of lettuce (providing that crunch), creamy sweet mango slices and crispy duck skin go so well together. I’m not sure whether it’s just been too long since we’ve had mango duck or it was the happiness of the whole family being together under one roof. but that night, we were in sa yong and mango duck heaven.